A blog devoted to my interests which include anarchism and social movements, history, archeology, and anything else I choose to write about.

Friday, October 03, 2014

A 25 Year Economic Depression?

A
CIA analyst says that the stock market is close to having a 70%
down-turn - a 25 year long depression and the demise of the American
Empire will result. (*) Will this happen? Maybe not as soon as he
says, but you can't go on printing money and creating stock bubbles
without crashing at some point. The way I see it, the crash could
come any time now within in the next 5 years.

A
25 year depression? That we should be so lucky! Lucky you say, given
all the suffering that such an event would entail? Well, if you want
to see suffering, think run-away climate change. This could result in
the loss of hundreds of millions, even billions of lives. If
something isn't done in the 10-20 year window of opportunity we have,
that nightmare scenario will certainly unfold. Everyone other than
Koch-rotted climate change deniers knows this, but nothing is being
done to offset this coming disaster.

We,
the people, simply don't have the strength to force through the
necessary economic changes. Our sociopathic ruling classes simply
ignore the mass protests and go on as ever. If we get serious they
use state terror to crush us. (We see this already in Canada, with
non-violent environmental protestors criminally slandered as a
“terrorist threat.”)

One
important result of the 2008 Crisis was a free fall in the use of
petroleum. The price of a barrel fell from $140 to $42. Admittedly,
the higher price was in part a result of speculation, but this
speculation was in itself based on the hope of a higher demand. What
happened in 2008 was that people began driving less to save money.
The masses of unemployed also didn't have a job to drive to. The
lower demand for goods also meant less petroleum use, both in the
manufacturing processes (think oil-based plastics) and in
transportation of those products. This fall off in demand will occur in the coming
crisis.

Shale
and tar sand oil was, and will be, negatively effected. This form of
oil production needs about $80 a barrel to be profitable. Below that
and they fold up shop. Furthermore, the tar sands are themselves a
major source of CO2.

With
the Economic Crisis Chapter 2, the whole developed world becomes like
Cuba enduring the the Yanqui economic blockade and the loss of
Russian sugar purchases. People cease buying, recycling and repairing
become the norm. Creative individuals discover that new products can
be produced locally in small shops and vast factories and corporate
agglomerations are unnecessary, indeed an impediment to a rational
system. Urban farming spreads. Local currencies are created to
replace the worthless official money. People leave the suburbs for
the cities or villages and the most wasteful way of living ever
devised is abandoned. The global economy continues to contract, and
in a virtuous circle ever further reduces the production of atmospheric
CO2.

A
lengthy and deep depression, by reducing CO2 emissions may well be
the action that buys us more time, enough time to finally get our
act together and change the system and create a sustainable,
steady state economy. Perhaps we can avoid the horrors of
run-away climate change. (This
is the first time I have felt anything positive in years.)

The
depression may well be a factor in speeding up the process of social
and economic change. As of this moment, in spite of the hard times,
the austerity and endless war-mongering, the majority of the
population sit on their hands. Yet, surveys show this same majority
are not at all happy with the present conditions. They are just fence
sitting. Yet, many of them continue to vote for their worst enemies
and the people demonstrating in the streets are only a minority. Perhaps they sit
back out of fear, hanging on to what they have. Perhaps it is like
the situation of the frog in the gradually heating pot of water,
the negative effects haven't reached them yet. A second major shock
should knock them off that fence into active opposition. (**)

Once
the vast majority are in open opposition, the system is going down
the same road that East Germany took in 1989. State terror, so useful
against minorities, - think the suppression of Occupy in the USA -
becomes a dangerous option against majorities. It will only serve to
further inflame them. Support for the system could end up reduced to
the elite and their lackeys. At this point the political system would
collapse and could be replaced by the new forms of democracy that
have been gestating over the last three decades or more.

1 Comments:

Cocoabean said...

Although I don't share your fear of "man-made" climate change, I agree wholeheartedly with the gist of your post!

The misallocations of capital constantly occurring under our fiat money/central banking/fractional reserve fraud system have taken a heavy toll on the environment and have wasted vast quantities of natural resources.

Any economic downturn that threatens to bring consumption levels back into some semblance of relation to objective resource scarcity cannot be bad...